State Department Agency Notorious for Censoring Conservatives and Independent Media to Shut Down
The State Department’s Global Engagement Center announced on Monday that they were shuttering their doors after GOP officials defunded the program with the new funding bill.
The State Department insists the agency was successful at tracking propaganda and disinformation campaigns from US adversaries such as Russia and China.
This is false. Their main focus was targeting American and foreign media sites that promoted Donald Trump and populism and rejected the dominating and godless globalist movement in the world today.
The Global Engagement Initiative was notorious for blacklisting and censoring conservative and independent media outlets like The
Gateway Pundit.
Senator Eric Schmitt (R-MO), who has led efforts against government censorship of American websites cheered the news.
Via Newsmax.
It had approximately 120 staff members and an annual budget of $61 million.
Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., last week called on Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to cut off funding for the GEC, which he said, “mutated into a massive censorship machine designed to suppress narratives that question establishment thinking.”
The State Department originally said it intended to shut down the agency, but the CR bill lawmakers fought over last week still had funding for the GEC.
The new version of the short-term spending bill agreed to by lawmakers scrapped that.
The Global Engagement Center is not the only State Department funded censorship operations.
The State Department also funds the
the international censorship group International Fact Checking Network (IFCN).
IFCN, despite being funded by the State Department, operates in the US.
In September, The Washington Examiner reported on how the State Department skirted the law and funded censorship groups.
An office housed within the State Department is faulted in a new congressional report with flouting its mandate to thwart foreign disinformation through its funding of groups engaged in “censorship” against small businesses in the United States.
“This interim report outlines how government agencies are working with the private sector to ensure that certain businesses do not have a fair chance to compete online,” said Rep. Roger Williams (R-TX), who chairs the House Small Business Committee. “Even worse, this report uncovers how taxpayer dollars contributed to the censorship that picks winners and losers in the online marketplace.”
The 66-page report was prepared by investigators on the Republican-led House Small Business Committee. For over a year, the panel has sought sprawling funding records from the State Department’s Global Engagement Center on its programs fighting alleged disinformation and misinformation. That investigation began due to a series of Washington Examiner reports on the office bankrolling the Global Disinformation Index — a British group pressuring advertisers to defund right-of-center media outlets in the U.S.
The release of the report comes as the Global Engagement Center, which has an estimated budget of $61 million and a staff of 125, faces the potential to lose funding over GOP-led frustrations about its involvement with apparent domestic censorship groups. A provision through the annual State Department appropriations bill, which passed the House this summer and will be negotiated in the Senate, aims to ban future checks to the GEC. The office is also facing a lawsuit from conservative media outlets over the $100,000 the GEC sent to GDI and its support of a company called NewsGuard that rates the “misinformation” levels of news outlets.
It is certainly good news that the Global Engagement Center has been defunded. But this is just a start.
Via Grok AI.
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Global Engagement Center (GEC): There’s mention of $117 million allocated for the GEC in a spending bill, which some critics argue is used not just for fighting foreign disinformation but also for domestic censorship efforts.
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Misinformation Research: Federal spending on “misinformation research” has reportedly increased significantly, from $316,000 in 2017 to $126 million in 2021, suggesting a broad investment in monitoring and potentially censoring online discourse.
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Censorship Bureaucracy: There’s also mention of a new online censorship bureaucracy costing taxpayers $201 million with 330 new positions aimed at censorship, although this figure might be part of broader initiatives rather than direct censorship.
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Biden Administration’s Spending: Reports claim that under the Biden administration, there was an expenditure of $267 million on efforts to combat “misinformation,” which some critics view as an attempt to censor speech.
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Payments to Social Media: There’s also a claim that the DOJ and FBI paid Twitter (now X) $3.4 million to censor information before the 2020 election, indicating direct financial involvement in censorship activities.
These figures collectively suggest a significant investment by the U.S. government in programs and initiatives that could be interpreted as censorship or the suppression of speech, though official figures and exact purposes can be hard to pin down due to the nature of these programs and the controversies surrounding them. Remember, these numbers are based on reports and posts on social media platforms like X, which might not always reflect the full or verified scope of government spending on such activities.
Jim Hoft is the founder and editor of The Gateway Pundit, one of the top conservative news outlets in America. Jim was awarded the Reed Irvine Accuracy in Media Award in 2013 and is the proud recipient of the Breitbart Award for Excellence in Online Journalism from the Americans for Prosperity Foundation in May 2016. In 2023, The Gateway Pundit received the Most Trusted Print Media Award at the American Liberty Awards.You can email Jim Hoft here, and read more of Jim Hoft’s articles here.
